I was talking with Bill Topkis yesterday about our new eMember initiative for ISCA and we got on to the subject of OA trends. We were both comiserating over the fact that by the end of NOAC our needs list will be longer than it is now, regardless of how many issues we pick-up. Bill mentioned that John Pannell who only collects images and thus does not have the financial challenges as collecting the actual patches has said he is losing ground.

Bill also reported that with the upcoming edition of Blue Book it will document over 50,000 issues. This is nearly a doubling of the issues in the prior edition. Much of this growth is due to greater documentation of chapter and event items as well as regular lodge pieces but still…. The last issue of Blue Book had chapter and event items covered as well. The days of collecting it all are gone.